Warning - Use is Highly Contagious

I guess I had always known this - if I was in a highly charged situation, I tensed up myself.
If it was a family quarrel, for example, or an argument between friends, I would find myself getting tense even if I wasn't directly involved in what was going on.
All along, I'd equated it with my relationship with the people in the situation - i.e. both sides in the quarrel are dear to me - therefore I tense up.
This was in the Dark Ages before I got involved with the Alexander Technique.
After I started training I noticed that I didn't have to be involved with the people concerned - a fight between two strangers at a bus stop left me with a tight neck, too.
If I was looking at somebody going through emotional trauma, I tightened in sympathy.
Then I noticed that there didn't even have to be an open altercation - someone standing tensely next to me communicated that tension to me.
Are we then going through life communicating tight necks and tensions to each other? What a waste of time!
If we are able to transmit things at this subtle level, why on earth don't we transmit peace and good will?

Releasing a Cold

Two days ago, I brought my mother back from the hospital, where she'd been admitted for investigation into a fever which wasn't responding to anything -
She's better, but a friendly bug must have latched on to me there, because I've been sniffling dismally through my days, and feeling a marked disinclination for any effort, even the mental kind.
Of course, Alexander junkie that I am, I felt that this was a situation that called for even more determined directing than usual. After all, if it can't be used when I am uncomfortable or ill, then what good is it?
So there I was, heroically directing away, with the ache and tickle in my throat refusing to go away, but me refusing to give up, saying to myself - 'Release, release! Go on, release!'
It must have been sheer exhaustion which made me stop for a bit - and which gave me the space for a uniquely physical realisation that my throat was really tight and that was why it was hurting so much. With that realisation I was suddenly able to let go, and immediately I felt a sense of rushing warmth and comfort which came as an immense relief.
I'd like to be able to say that that also got rid of my sniffles, but it didn't. However, it is allowing me to enjoy my frequent doses of milky tea laced with honey, cardamom, crushed pepper and dried ginger which is my favourite medicine for a cold and sore throat. And I don't want, quite so much, to curl up in a corner and die. My head still feels heavy, and I am conscious that I have a throat, but the over-riding misery is gone.
I can do things - witness this post. And that's good enough for me.

Fitting Into Your Skin

I remember reading about how people often had to remake their clothes after having Alexander lessons because their bodies had changed - become straighter, more poised - and their clothes no longer fit in the old way.

But I have realised another thing - I am beginning to fit better into my own skin after lessons. I realise how cramped and contracted I'd been, as if I had been shrinking into myself, not expanding to take up all the space I had available in myself. And I didn't even regard me as particularly lacking in confidence!

Joanna Field, in her book A Life of One's Own, describes how she allowed her awareness to expand so that it filled all of herself. She called this 'that fat feeling', and found that if she used this when she was feeling tired, in a very short while, she felt refreshed with a new sense of energy.

I'm also reminded of Marjorie Barlow's statement in her Alexander Memorial Lecture - 'It is as if each of us is trying to take up the least possible amount of room in the Universe.' (Marjorie Barlow incidentally, was Alexander's niece, pupil and then assistant teacher for a number of years.)

But it is so true that that most of us are continually trying to make ourselves small, to reduce the amount of space we occupy, and the more diffident we are, the smaller we try to make ourselves. Often, in a blind reaction to that, and with a vague feeling that something is wrong, we force ourselves into the opposite - we push aggressively forward, quick to lose our tempers, and insistent on our stand that 'I'll take no nonsense from anyone.' Which actually doesn't fool anybody.

And when we're comfortable in our own skins, we lose that frightened feeling that we need to be protecting ourselves all the time. We can be calm and collected, but we can also have the confidence to be wrong sometimes, to look a bit foolish without feeling that the world has ended.

Taking my blog for a walk

I'm realising that starting a blog is a bit like having a virtual pet - you have to feed it and water it, and take it for walks, or it will languish and die.
Hopefully my spiral monkeys haven't gone so far, or if they have, will revive very soon.
Amazing how quickly time passes - I can't believe my last post was in March, and here we are in the second half of the year - Time doesn't seem to be doing much inhibiting here!
I was away for six weeks in Brighton for a much needed refresher course. Had the time of my life meeting old friends and teachers, working with them and catching up on all that had happened. Walked around noticing changes - favourite shops that had moved or closed down, a couple of lovely old houses that have been demolished to make way for a block of flats...
The work really helped me. I realised that I had spent two years telling people to allow release but had almost forgotten how it works for me! That was a revelation - noticing how subtly I was holding tension in my arms and legs - and a good reminder that I need to be eternally vigilant, not just for my clients, but for myself as well.
Still, the best part is being back and starting work again, with a feeling of having a whole lot of new ideas I can use with people to start them on this fascinating journey of balance and release.
Just got a high today - when my client finished his lesson this morning, he remarked that all along he had thought that the emotions controlled the body and there was nothing he could do about it, but now he was realising that the body too had its own influence on the emotions, and that was an area he could do something about! Great!

Spiral Learning - Or, Don't Worry, It'll Come Round Again

These were some of the most frequent words that I heard my teacher speak.

(and I don't think I say it to my pupils often enough.)

It was really reassuring because we had the comfort of knowing that even if we didn't quite get it this time, we could always tackle it when it came by again.

Welcome to spiral learning, which I personally believe is a more accurate model of how we actually learn. As opposed to straight line or linear learning.

When I was training, we did the same things for three years - simplistically speaking. I think I can quite accurately state that I'd been introduced to all the relevant concepts by end of week 1. So what was I doing the rest of the 2 years and 51 weeks?

Learning the same things differently. In greater depth and subtlety. In different applications. Seeing different aspects of it which I couldn't see the first, second or third time; seeing them this time round because I had changed.

We learnt new things all the time, but they were also part of the things we'd learnt the previous day, or the previous week.

So it didn't worry us too much if we couldn't see the point of some demo straightaway because we knew that we'd get it the next time it was done - or the next.

So yes, I really need to say that a lot more to my pupils!

An Alexander Student's Story - Part IV

Here's what Leela feels the Alexander Technique has done for her. I haven't included her whole list, but I think this will give you an idea -

1.My muscles DO obey instructions from my brain.
2. Practising the AT allows me to do everything I want to do or have to do such as lift buckets and move furniture, but in a way that the body was designed by nature to do. Now every mundane activity is an adventure for me because I am learning to do it in a new and more efficient way.
3. It's all about stopping and "coming back to quiet" before doing anything, taking time to think before I make a conscious choice to react or NOT to react. This has greatly curbed my native impulsiveness and improved my interaction with other people.
4. The AT is an ongoing process. It is not confined within a time frame. It is not like putting in one's sentence in the gym for an hour each day, and then forgetting about fitness till the next day! I have the rest of my life to practise what I have learned and gradually allow my life (and my mind) to evolve and improve instead of looking for immediate results.
As I said, this is just a selection of the ways in which Leela feels the Alexander Technique has helped her. And she ends -
AT has been like giving myself a gift. At long last I am learning to focus on myself in a way that is good and right. After a lifetime of doing everything fast, of racing against against everyone and with myself, I am learning that the sky will not fall down if I stop and think before I act or speak or do ...
"Ask not that your load be lighter; ask rather that your back be stronger," I read recently. To which I'd like to add," Absolutely! But also learn the Alexander Technique!"
I enjoyed reading her account tremendously because it gave me another view, so to speak. Some of the experiences she had are fairly common, but there were others which are uniquely hers, born out of her life, and the kind of person she is. Not to speak of that fascinating dream she had, which seemed to mirror the process she was going through!
That's why I always ask people to start a journal when they start their lessons - it gives a record of their unique journey, and it shows them that things have indeed been changing and developing in them.

An Alexander Student's Story - Part III

Here's the dream that Leela had -
In my dream, I am trapped in a very small space and unable to move. It is a narrow passage where the ceiling is so low that I have to bend double and cannot straighten up even though my back aches abominably; or I am climbing up a steep staircase or hill with a heavy load on my back; or I am trapped in a car and the lock is stuck; or I'm in a cramped elevator which is stuck and I am unable to get out.

At this point I always get up with that familiar back ache and I am unable to sleep again. Perhaps it is my body's way of signalling that I have been is the same position for too long and that it's time to turn and give my back a rest. This fact alone I have found interesting enough, but something even more interesting happened.

One night when I was about half way through my classes I had that dream. This time I was a tourist trapped in a dark underground cave along with a lot of other people with no way out. I was hemmed in by a crowd of people and the hard stone walls of the cave and my back was giving out. This is the point where normally I would have woken up in agony. This time though, I did not wake up at all. Still in the dream, one of my fellow tourists pointed to a wide, bright and airy passage that none of us had observed. We all made our way to that passage in a nice orderly sort of way and were able to get out into the open air where the sun was shining and and the sky was blue and everything was right with the world.

That was the first time I slept right through the night and woke up at a normal time without any back pain at all.
While I was asleep, had my brain sent directions to my muscles to release? Had they obeyed? I will never know.
I'm going to devote one more post to this. I'd like to include a random selection of the benefits that Leela feels she got from her lessons.
What struck me is that she got something out of the Alexander Technique that transformed her life without making any dramatic external changes. There's something magical about that!

An Alexander Student's Story - Part II

You've met Leela -
The story continues...
It is no wonder then that for many years I have been suffering from serious upper and lower back ailments which have forced me to be almost bed-ridden or completely house bound for weeks at a time. What's more my hip area had become all crooked; anyone could see that I was quite misaligned and I had been so for many years. My lower back was prone to frequent spasms causing pain and immobility, all probably from the wrong, albeit unconscious use of the body. Scans and countless visits to doctors confirmed a couple of herniated discs and mild atrophy of spinal muscles.
Surgery was considered but so far has been avoided. Apparently it is a condition that "cannot be reversed but only managed." Managed how? With rest and exercise.
Rest? What was that? I did not do "rest"!
Then I happened upon an article about the Alexander Technique and soon after, I read a book on it. It made a lot of sense to me.
After reading the book twice through, I longed to learn the Alexander Technique but thought that classes were available only outside India. I contented myself by reading and researching the AT on the internet.
They say in our philosophy that the intensity of the search determines the appearance of the teacher. In other words, "When the pupil is ready the teacher appears."
Leela's search must have been really intense because not only was I living in Bangalore, where she also lives, but I worked in a place not five minutes drive from her flat! She came in for a taster and promptly signed up for 15 lessons.
Read on...
In the first lesson I was asked to request my neck muscles to release but not to DO anything - simply allow the release to happen on its own. I was puzzled. What in the world was "release" and would my muslces obey? Why should they? I did not think they would.
After the first couple of classes, I began to actually feel that sense of release though some of the time I had to ask myself if I had only imagined it. For the first time I understood how liberating it could be to let go. It was quite a new and heady feeling! Of course the release was barely perceptible at first but gradually my awareness became stronger; I also noticed that the interval between my asking for the release and the actual release became shorter.
The hard part was still to come.
When I felt the release I was delighted and when it disappeared I was left with a good deal of disappointment. Learning to recognise the release (which my teacher helped me to do) and let it go instead of trying to hold on to it was a hard to understand concept; so is "not doing" rather than "doing". As hard, if not harder, especially for me, is to not look for results but to allow things to happen or not happen in their own time.
For the first time in my life I know what it is to be able to release and relax, to really enjoy it, even if it is just for those fifteen minutes while lying in semi-supine.
One day Leela came in and narrated a dream she had had the previous night; I found it really intriguing -
But I think I will keep that for my next post ...

An Alexander student's story - Part I

I usually don't ask my pupils to give a written account of their experience with the Alexander Technique. This is not because I doubt that they have anything of value to say - I know each of them has. It's because I also know that for most people, writing is a chore, and given the busy lives that most of us lead, I'm reluctant to impose any extra burden on them. So I usually content myself with making detailed notes of any observations they make during the course of their lessons.
So you can imagine how delighted I was when one of my pupils actually said that she was writing out an account of her AT journey, and would I like to look at it? It was a bit long, she warned.
Long! That sounded like exactly the kind of exhaustive narrative I wanted. I begged her to send it to me as soon as she had finished writing, checking, editing and so on, and that she did.
I found it so fascinating that I asked her permission to put it on my blog, which she very generously gave.
I don't want to interfere with her own voice by retelling her story, so I'm going to post excerpts, in instalments, for people to read. It's quite possible that her experiences may strike a chord with your own; in that case, please do share - similarities as well as differences.
First of all, meet Leela -
I believe that the world is divided into two types of people, the Type A person and the Type B person. I am a classic "A type", impatient, goal-oriented, competitive, restless, irritable, impulsive, hard on myself and a perfectionist.
I am known to cluck with impatience and grab a task out of the hands of somebody who, I think, is doing it too slowly or incompetently and do it myself. Faster! I have to arrange the magazines on the coffee table in order of their size, shoes must be paired and put away, and no matter how late at night, every single teaspoon and glass must be washed, dried and stored in its rightful place before I can sleep.
As for being competitive, I have to win every game of scrabble that I play and I feel very dissatisfied if I cannot complete a crossword puzzle. Swimming is my favourite form of exercise and the only thing I am permitted to do because it is low-impact exercise. In the pool I find myself swimming faster when I hear somebody drawing level with me and try to get to the other end sooner than he/she does!
It is not without shame (after all this is a "warts and all" true confession) that I admit this: when I hang out laundry to dry and catch sight of my neighbour doing the same, I speed it up and take childish pleasure in completing the task before she does! The lady I am competing with is, naturally, blissfully unaware that she is in a race!
I am a compulsive list maker. I cannot function without making lists. I plan not just my day but my week and when I have finished the list I have for today with time still left over, I start on tomorrow's jobs!
I never ever take breaks, going from one task to another without ever sitting down even when my back aches. I say to myself, "But this recipe asks me to stir continuously, so how can I stop now?"
Come to think of it, this is a metaphor for the way I live: I "stir continuously"!